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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed.

"The rescue of the planet’s protective ozone layer has been hailed as one of the great success stories of modern environmental regulation — but on Monday, an international team of 22 scientists raised doubts about whether ozone is recovering as expected across much of the world."

"The political fight over global warming has extended to science education in recent years as several states have attempted to weaken or block new teaching standards that included information about climate science. But only in Idaho has the state legislature stripped all mentions of human-caused climate change from statewide science guidelines while leaving the rest of the standards intact."

"State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, in a letter sent Monday to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, called the proposed oil and gas lease sales off Washington “unlawful, unsafe and harmful to the economy.”"

"The top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent a letter to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Tuesday, calling into question a dramatic decrease in grant funding awarded by the agency in the past year."

"Republican lawmakers are threatening to cut off U.S. funding for the World Health Organization’s cancer research program over its finding that the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup is probably carcinogenic to humans."

"Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding."

"A federal judge in California who Donald Trump once derided for his ethnicity will hear a case Friday that could determine the president’s latitude to waive environmental laws, paving the way for his 'big, beautiful' border wall."

"Monsanto Corp. faces a treble damages class action alleging that its pesticide Dicamba poses such a risk to farmers they are forced to purchase resistant seed — marketed under patent at high prices by Monsanto — to avoid catastrophic damage to their crops from pesticide drift."

The Sierra Club has filed suit in a federal court in California over EPA's failure to respond to its Freedom of Information Act request for records on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's changes to the agency's FOIA policies.

"As Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke prepared to travel to the Carolinas to discuss offshore drilling, state attorneys general condemned the Trump administration’s plan to expand development of oil and gas in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans as “outrageous” and “reckless.”"

"Due to heavy fertilizer use, California's Central Valley is behind up to 41 percent of the state's emissions of nitrogen oxide — an air pollutant and climate-warming gas".

"A large proportion of California's nitrogen oxide—which can cause harmful ozone and a variety of health impacts—comes from heavy fertilizer use in the state's Central Valley, according to a new study.

"A judge has ruled that U.S. wildlife managers erred in denying Endangered Species Act protection to bison at Yellowstone National Park and must reconsider extending such safeguards to America’s largest pure-bred herd of wild buffalo."